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The well-known Scientology protester Keith Henson has filed an appeal to the Appellate Division of the Riverside County Superior Court of his criminal conviction in 2001 of misdemeanor "interfering with a religion" for picketing in front of a Scientology "base" in Hemet, CA. The ruling was roundly criticized as inconsistent with Henson's First Amendment rights to criticize Scientology: much of the evidence used against him consisted of general statements he made online that were very critical of Scientology but fell far short of the sort of "true threat" required to overcome his First Amendment rights. The trial court also limited his ability to explain his actions or present contrary evidence. The Court of Appeal should take a hard look at the case and reverse the conviction.

Two months ago, in In re Bilski, the Federal Circuit rejected the notion that anything that produces a "useful, concrete, and tangible result" is potentially patentable. Instead, to be patent-eligible, an idea must be "tied to a particular machine or apparatus," or it must "transform a particular article into a different state or thing." (To qualify for a patent, it also has to meet various other requirements, such as being novel.)

As to transformation, the court noted that not just any transformation will do. The transformation "must be central to the purpose of the claimed process," and the "articles" transformed must either be "physical objects or substances" or "representative of physical objects or substances."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the recording industry has halted its mass litigation campaign against music fans for Internet file-sharing, a campaign that has targeted more than 35,000 Americans over more than 5 years (for a complete history of the lawsuits, see our RIAA v. The People white paper).

Ending the lawsuit campaign is long overdue. The campaign has been, by any measure, a failure. The lawsuits have not reduced unauthorized file-sharing and have not gotten a single artist paid.

Google takes privacy very seriously and we aim to strike the appropriate balance between protecting our users' privacy and offering them benefits of data retention, such as better security measures and new innovations. Earlier this year, we already committed to anonymizing IP addresses in our server logs after nine months, significantly shorter than our previous 18 month retention policy. When we make changes to our policies, they are dependent on what will be best for our users both in terms of the services we provide and the respect of their privacy. It is a balance that we are continually evaluating.

Over the weekend, Newsweek revealed Thomas M. Tamm as the man who first blew the whistle on the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program. Last night, Mr. Tamm gave his first public interview on The Rachel Maddow Show:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and ten other civil liberties organizations today sent an open letter today to Michigan State University (MSU) President Lou Anna K. Simon in defense of MSU student government leader Kara Spencer. Ms. Spencer was formally warned by MSU and labeled a "spammer" for sending e-mails to 391 faculty members raising concerns about a controversial change in the university's calendar.

Today, Yahoo upped the ante when it comes to protecting search engine users' privacy, announcing a new data retention policy providing for anonymization of search queries — as well as page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks — after 90 days. This announcement comes on the heels of Google's announcement in September that it would be anonymizing its logs after 9 months.